


The Dog Days

by Dark Fox (youkomj)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Abuse, Gang Violence, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Poverty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 08:35:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17040401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youkomj/pseuds/Dark%20Fox
Summary: Middle school was complicated for everyone. Especially for Jounochi Katsuya.





	The Dog Days

**Author's Note:**

> Rated for safety.
> 
> So. Something I carried over from my RP blog, this is kindda... my first ficlet thing for the fandom.
> 
> Was thinking of expanding on it, but decided to not.
> 
> Please heed the warnings made earlier! Otherwise, please tell me how I did? And enjoy if you can. :3

##  _…Year one…_

   You barely manage to finish your primary education, despite the mess of your parents’ inevitable divorce. Your teachers all celebrated it as a miracle, so you don’t tell them your father threatened to kill you if you flunked elementary. You don’t tell them you studied harder and learned more locking yourself in a closet with a nightlight than you ever did in the classroom.

   They wouldn’t know and you know they wouldn’t care. They wouldn’t care that you’re angry and hurt and alone. They wouldn’t care that you have to struggle not to look out the window at every motion and sound. They wouldn’t care if information doesn’t stick unless you learn to do it yourself. These are just things you’ll have to deal with on your own.

   The only things that make sense anymore are things you can do with your own hands.

   So you spend your first year of secondary schooling – middle school, specifically – learning what your hands can do. They’re a little big on you, so they can’t do anything especially stealthy, right? But they’re not useless. You can clean and you already know how to make rice on your own.

   You can do more. You  _have to_  do more.

   You decide to teach yourself what you call “practical skills”. There was no way someone like you would get a real job, right? So you have to make money some other way.

   You can’t go anywhere without a car, so you learn from older kids and their siblings how to hot wire a car. It’s not easy, but you learn you’re stronger than you look, so actually breaking into a car is the easy part, but getting the right wires crossed nearly got you electrocuted.

  Then you’re introduced to breaking and entering. You learn to break windows with your fists and some tape. You learn to pick pockets so well that you take things from the older students without getting caught. You learn to lie so well that the teachers have to punish you and whoever else you started trouble with just so they could hide their own confusion.

   Slight of hand and lying seem to be your thing.

   It’s not enough. Stealing from the careless and fooling fools isn’t enough for you. Sure, you get a brief thrill from it, but you get so good so quickly that the excitement of getting caught doesn’t exist after a while.

   Not until you stole from him.

**Hirutani.**

   It was a quick, painful defeat. He’d found you, cornered you behind the school with a small gang of students and beat you down until you nearly blacked out. Then he spat on you, calling you weak and amusing. _Like a dog._

  The familiar heat of anger boiled up in your gut as you glared up at him with your brown eyes and he stared into yours a moment before kicking you in the face and walking off.

   You decided then that you wanted to beat his ass in.

   So you start fights. None of them you win, at first. It takes months to figure out what you’re doing wrong, figure out how to get stronger, how to win a fight and not feel like garbage after it.

   Of course, you piss more than a few people off. You piss off whole gangs. You fight whole gangs.

  Then you start winning. They go from calling you a mutt to calling you a mad dog. Eventually, you force every one of them to call you by name.

    _Jounochi._  Your name is  _Jounochi Katsuya_  and soon your fists and eyes are enough of a threat to those around you to make them remember it.

    _Your name is **Jounochi**._

   And  _you_  don’t  _need_  a gang to be strong.

##  _…Year two…_

   “Are you Jounochi Katsuya?”

   It’s the start of the second year and you find yourself staring down some guy at the gated entrance. Brown eyes, brown hair and he looks like he’s been looking for you his whole damn life. His hands are shoved in his pockets and he tries to look composed and relaxed, but you can see the sweat on his neck and the quiver of his eyes.

   You didn’t expect to be this sort of popular in middle school.

  “Who’s askin’?” You look him over, mirroring his stance after brushing your hair to the side. It helps keep your sight clear. But damn if it doesn’t make you look a little ridiculous.

  “Honda Hiroto,” he said simply. “I’m here to fight you.”

   He says that and you’re forced to look him over a little harder. Sharp eyes, he knows exactly what he’s looking for. A strong chin with sharp cheeks. No nonsense, even down to his blood. His hair is short and neat. Potentially military in his family? Or maybe he just likes the appearance of it.

   … Maybe a little too cute to beat up just for his own masochism.

  “It’s the first day of school,” you say flatly. “If you really want to fight me, then prove to me you’re an able fighter. I don’t want to waste my time with nobodies.”

   This gets him angry, but you don’t care. You walk passed him. He bares healthy white teeth at you – you can’t help keeping an eye on him – but does little more than snarl at your arrogance.

   It’s nice to be seen as more confident than you are…

* * *

   “You’ve made a name for yourself, mutt. I’m surprised.”

   Hirutani stands before you, his growing gang behind him as he lets a lit cigarette hang from his thin, dry lips. There’s some older students behind him. At least one first year highschooler, too. His influence had spread considerably.

   “I’d been working, too,” he said, taking a lazy drag from the fire stick. “We’d been fighting highschoolers from other districts. Taking territory.” The young man pauses, looks you over slowly. (You shiver, feeling his eyes rake over you like claws in raw meat.) “We need strong people to continue our hold on the area…”

   “So you sought me out?”

   “No.” Hirutani nods his head to the side. “He did.”

   You look over and see a vaguely familiar face. Brown hair and eyes. Sharp features. No nonsense. What was his name?

   “He says you pissed him off, Jounochi,” Hirutani smiled. “Said he wanted to know if you were one of mine so he could settle a score.”

   The brown haired teen paled, seeming to realize a mistake he’d made. You look away from him, back to Hirutani.

   “Let’s see if you are.” He motions for a few of his gangsters to step forward. They take out brass knuckles. A knife. Some rope. They’re bigger than you. Bulkier than you.

   And fall like rocks at your feet. One punch each. They don’t get up.

   Hirutani’s cig fell from his lips at some point. He turned towards the brown haired teen, rage in his eyes as he pointed to you. “YOU THINK THIS IS A FUCKING JOKE?! WHAT IS THIS, HONDA!?”

  Honda – face flushed and eyes filled with horrific admiration – looks to Hirutani just long enough to acknowledge the yelling before he stares at you again. “I… don’t know.”

   Hirutani bares his teeth, then orders more of his gang to go for you. They all take out small weapons – blades, heavy objects, things to throw and catch you – while crying out for your death.

   There’s seven. Too many to take out on your own.

   So you run. Hirutani laughs in your ears and you hear Honda call out for you. You can’t help wondering why he sounded worried, but dismiss it.

   Downhill. It’s a bad idea, but you were never a strategist. You just knew going downhill made you run faster. You knew the momentum was hard to stop. The faster the runner went, the faster down you went.

  You, Jounochi, are a damn fast runner, so you make it to the bottom of the hill easily before turning to the mob behind you.

   The first one runs right into your fist and knocks himself out. It hurts because you didn’t position your knuckles right, but it’s enough to make the others try and stop.

   Momentum’s a bitch, though, so you run back up towards them and knock down the next closest two. Three down. Four to go.

   By the time they catch on to what’s happening, the remainder spread themselves around and surround you. Four. Four was always an unlucky number, wasn’t it? You can’t help thinking you should’ve tried to bring down one more before they got their footing.

   Hirutani’s voice calls out for them to stop as he makes his way down the hill followed by a roughed up looking Honda, who’s expression quickly looks like one of worry. Fear.

  You don’t really hear Hirutani. You just stand there, ready to accept whatever came your way as he talks something about being impressed. Half his gang, down by your hand. Reconsidering your worth. So on and so forth.

   “Join me.”

   You look towards him, look at his outstretched open palm. Then you look to Honda, who is quickly looking more and more disheartened, like he’d lost something he’d been looking for his whole damn life.

   You slap Hirutani’s hand away. You don’t need a gang to be strong.

   He responds, punching you in the face with his other hand. It lands like a train and you fall to the ground. The others swarm on you like starving crows. You send out the occasional kick, but Hirutani pulls you by your foot and punches you with his own fists, enraged and baring his teeth at you.

_Like a dog._

   A few voices cry out in pain, the second being the only one to pull Hirutani from his rage long enough to see what’s going on. His face is met with a black and white sneaker as he’s kicked away from you.

   Honda Hiroto stands over you, a little more beat up and a lot more pissed. Then he looks down at you as you slowly uncurl yourself. Neither of you speak, but you get back up and look him in the eyes.

**_Honda…_ **

   “I’ll keep the other guys off your back,” he says almost factually. “You deal with Hirutani.”

   You smirk. “Can you even fight four guys?”

   He smirks back. “Better than you, probably.”

   The two of you don’t get the chance to bicker before the five surround you.

   Honda holds his own well enough, focusing his punches and being more methodical in what he does in comparison to you, who strikes hard and fast without thinking.

   The four goons fall easy after a bit, but Hirutani was never one to go down without some blood shed. He takes down Honda with two hard blows to the head, Honda bouncing off the dirt like a ball. Then he turns to you.

   You’re on your back before you can respond, the larger teen pinning you to the ground by your wrists, sitting on your chest, growling as he stared down at you.

   Then his eyes soften. His anger still burns into the back of your skull, but it’s clouded by something else.

   Before you can think to lash out, both of your wrists are held in one of his hands, the other moving to your scalp and pulling your hair. He forces you to turn your head, jerking your hair side to side as his eyes dig into your skin again.

   He looks hungry. Like a starved animal eyeing a corpse. Like dying fire eating up dried wood.

   Pure. Unfiltered. Want.

   It makes your heart skip when his hand meanders down to your face, your chin, your neck. You swallow as his eyes give way to curiosity and–

   You gasp and try to kick away when his free hand slips behind him and against your crotch. Screaming and yelling, you let out another burst of energy and almost throw him off before he makes you yelp when he grabs your crotch.

         “Be.   _ **M I N E**._”

   …

   You swallow thick. His hand wonders again and you don’t fight it. Some part of your mind – a part you hate and grow disgusted with later – enjoys the attention. You enjoy him focusing on you and only you. You enjoy being an object of desire, even if you don’t like the circumstances it’s under.

   So when you give a muffled whimper as his hand slides down your pants, you can’t help yourself when you call his name.

      “ _Hirutani…_ ”

   And that’s all he needs.

* * *

   Honda doesn’t leave your side, even months after the confrontation. You see him hanging around other gangs and wonder why he doesn’t just stick with them. He wants the rep, right? It makes sense. You’d go, too, if you had the attention span for gang orientations.

   But he stays with you and teases you about being an idiot. Books are hard. He doesn’t understand because he flies through them like the bits of paper that they are, but the lengths of text down and across each slip makes your eyes tired. It makes you tired just LOOKING at it all.

   He helps you with studying. Reads to you key points. Makes you work it out yourself. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s a better one. Your grades go up, despite everything.

   Hirutani rebuilds his gang. Beats the shit out of everyone who lost to you. A few kids go missing for a week. It makes your stomach turn.

   So you fight him. There’s something about loyalty you yell at him. Those guys were depending on him and he treated them so cruelly. He doesn’t care.

   “They’re not like you, Jounochi.”

   The way he says your name makes your spine shiver. Your cheeks grow flushed before you charge in to fight him. You know how it ends. He strikes you down and pins you again. He stares you down again. His hand wonders over you again.

   You’re only really surprised when you feel his dick against your stomach.

   From then on, you know you’d only let him do more.

   You’re disgusted at yourself for it.

* * *

   “You mean… I got the paper route?”

   “Yeah!” Your teacher smiles at you, though you can feel the effort it takes. “The school considered your financial situation and with your improving grades, the board could no longer find a reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to work.”

   Your eyes widen. Your heart skips a beat. There’s a hot swelling in your chest as you listen to every god damn word this guys says. Maintain grades. Wake up earlier. Work every morning. Need a bike.

   He speaks and then he stops, looking at you with concern in his eyes.

   “Jounochi?”

   You didn’t realize you were crying until he pushed the box towards you.

##  _…Year three…_

   Each morning you wake before the sun, clean your apartment and ride off to the paper route. You refuse to smell like alcohol during your first job. You refuse to smell like trash. On top of that, you actually practice manners with your first employer! Well. Kind of. They yell at you and you can’t help but yell back. They don’t fire you, even thought it’d been like this since second year. They seem to like you.

   Then you go to school. Hirutani picks fights with you. Drags you into some secluded location. Then he strips you down and lays waste to your body for a half hour, leaving you to wash during class.

   You hate him.

   Honda doesn’t like it. Honda doesn’t like him. He doesn’t understand why you let Hirutani near you, but you suspect he knows exactly what happens when you’re gone. Still, he stays by your side, glaring down Hirutani and his gang. Even if he still meanders between you and other, larger groups, he still returns to you.

   “I like you better,” he says with a smirk. “Even if you are a dumbass.”

   He even tolerates you wrestling him down for insulting you… It’s weird to think he might be your first real friend.

   But he’s too damn observant. He knows you too well come the end of the first quarter.

   He’s not the best teacher, but he learns how to make your brain focus a little more. High liters, chapter summaries, visual cues and making you take notes that make sense to you.

   He also learns you pick fights with people stronger than you, better and more popular than you. You pick fights with groups you know you’ll lose against. You pick fights with Hirutani with no plans of winning.

   “You can’t keep doing this,” he insists. “Even if your sense of self worth is shit, you gotta know he won’t do any good by you. He doesn’t care for you, just what you can do for him.”

   You know. And you hate Honda an entire day for making you have to face that fact.

   Maybe later you’ll apologize to him for snapping at him and picking another fight with him… But for now, you need space.

   The next day of school you call in sick. It’s the first absence you have since elementary. You don’t stay home, though.

   You go to Hirutani’s.

   He skips regularly enough for you to know when he won’t show to school, so you go visit him, instead. He glares you down at the door, but doesn’t stop you as you slide in and push yourself against him. His eyes soften as you whisper to him your need. You want him. Need him. You kiss along his jaw and pull him down to hide your face in his shoulder.

   The way he holds you isn’t tender. His nails dig into your back and thighs like he’s holding a fish who might swim away. You’re not precious. You’re a possession. For a little while, it’s okay. You’re wanted and he shows you how much. Each pin to a wall, every bend over a table or chair, all invasions of your mouth are acts of pure desire and lust…

**And nothing else.**

               And he leaves you.  **With nothing else.**

   And it hurts more than any fight you’d endured when he finishes one last time. You’re not a person to him. You’re a tool. A tool he gets off on sometimes.

   You spend all of quarterly review avoiding him. It pisses him off, but Honda seems relieved. At least one of you is happy with this outcome.

* * *

   Work, clean, study, fight. Sometimes, you fight with Honda, just to make sure he can keep up. But your life enters a steady routine after a while. It’s simple and boring but that’s how life has to be sometimes.

   Your dad breaks down for the first time in years. You’re so scared the first time he cries on you. What do you do when the man who beats you says he loves you? What do you do when he begs you not to leave him? You don’t figure out the answer to this, even years later.

   Hirutani… Hates you. Hates Honda. Hates your dad. Hates everything and everyone who keeps you from him, his hands, his mouth, his–

   You ignore it best you can. It’s too easy to cave in to the one person who held you and didn’t want to let go. Especially when he looks at you like he’s something he can’t afford to lose.

   Honda, bless him, fights for you like he’s worried he’ll lose you for the rest of his life. It kind of embarrasses you when he makes any act of loyalty towards you. You kind of like this better, honestly.

   Hirutani.  _ **Hates.**_  Honda.

* * *

   “I’m going to Domino High.”

   He stares at you. There’s some disbelief in his expression. The quiet build of anger.

   “Honda and I wanna go to the same school again. Maybe get some a the same classes.”

   “What about us?”

   You can’t help looking at his eyes. It’s the first time he talked about the two of you as if you were a pair.

    It’s almost enough to make you reconsider.

   It’s enough to make you want him again when he cradles your maturing face in his rough hands. He brushes your parted bangs to the side almost tenderly. You feel yourself go weak for a moment.

   “I’m not letting you leave.”

   Your body tenses. “I’m not giving you the choice.”

   His fingers grip your hair, but before he can react, you punch him in the face. He stumbles back and you rush him. You’re stronger now. Faster. He still doesn’t go down easy, but he goes down. Stays down, even as he glares at you.

   You’re free. Reluctantly. Unwillingly. God, you’ve never wanted anything more than to take those punches back. But you know this is sick. He’s sick. You’re sick for wanting him, but you can learn to want better – LOOK for better.

   Honda’s around the corner when you leave, looking more sympathetic than usual before wrapping an arm around you. He offers to take you to Burger World.

   There’s nothing you’ve wanted more in your life.

* * *

   It’s fall when you find Honda. Beaten. Bloodied. Buried under trash behind a store you just happened to do deliveries for.

   The owners call an ambulance and you’re too twisted with fear and anger to speak. Instead, your tears well up and you stand over him, shaking and looking ready to murder the emergency respondents. It takes some time to calm you down, time to make you stop crying and then more to make you stop begging to go with him.

   You can’t lose him. He’s your best friend. The thing you’d been looking for your whole damn life.

   They reluctantly let you on the ambulance under the promise you won’t touch anything. It’s crowded and noisy and there’s too many things happening but you promise.

   You spot Hirutani as you step aboard.

   He smiles.

* * *

   It’s the first time you meet Honda’s sister. She shamelessly sports styles of one of the local girl gangs. Her son hangs off her hip as she questions you, short and sweet. You give every answer you can, though as she watches you her hardened expression seems to soften and she brushes back your hair.

   You’re ashamed how quickly you cry after that.

   His father and mother meet you and they talk about how Hiroto speaks so much of you. He trash talks you one minute and then speaks endlessly about how much you two do together. They say he’s never spoken so freely about his friends. They’re happy he got to know someone like you.

   Who the fuck just says these things about you? You feel overwhelmed in all sorts of directions, and it takes the older sister ushering her parents away to get any sort of clarity again.

   The doctors say it’s a concussion. They’re not sure when he’ll wake up, but it doesn’t look good. The sister takes it surprisingly well, considering the size of the hole in the wall she made. The parents immediately rip into the doctors, as if that’d cure Hiroto.

   You have one of your rare moments of clarity in the midst of all the chaos. The baby boy that sat next to you – Honda’s nephew – looks up at you expectantly. The two of you stare for a moment.

   “Useless.” The first words a baby spoke to you since your baby sister.

   You can’t argue it, this time. So instead you stand and head for the door. His sister starts to ask, but seems to catch herself. Instead, she simply makes a request of you.

   “Give ‘em hell’s wrath, kid.”

   You intend to do just that.

* * *

   Weeks pass. The fight comes and goes. You win. When you beat Hirutani to the ground, you beat him to the point of breaking a leg. It’ll heal. In time.

   He smiles at you before you knock his ass out.

   But that was the past. Honda woke up. You’re tasked with catching him up. A horrible decision, but you take the best notes you can and give him his homework. For once, because he’s concussed, he studies at a pace closer to yours. You’re not relieved, but he seems more sympathetic to your slow studying and growing confusion.

   His family offers you to come by at any time. They  **love**  you.

   You avoid them like the plague. What did you do to deserve their love? Nothing. So you don’t let yourself indulge in it, even after they send you holiday snacks.

   By the time Hirutani’s at school again, he’s unable to do you much harm. And you make sure every gangster in school knows you broke Hirutani.

   They leave you and Honda alone the rest of the year.

* * *

   Finals come and go. You get accepted into Domino with Honda. Both of you celebrate with more burgers, sodas…

   He offers to sneak some beer from his house and is surprised when you pale so suddenly. He seems to make a realization and instead offers more soda. It settles your stomach in the exact way soda shouldn’t.

* * *

   When did you start leaning on Honda physically? When did he start putting up with it? When did this feel okay?

   You find yourself looking for touches that weren’t fists through the air. Weren’t kicks or bites. Honda doesn’t seem to mind, though you shove him when he compares you to his dog.

##  _…Orientation…_

   The two of you look around at the new school, the new classmates and grow disgusted with how normal it all is. Students greeting students, joining clubs, seeing teachers…

   Not many are like you and Honda.

   You feel out of place again.

   But you’re strong. You and Honda are strong.

   Unlike that spiky haired kid with the stupid gold box. He’s too quiet. Too dodgy. He only hangs around one girl and spends the rest of his time playing games like some weird hermit and lets the more pathetic thugs beat up on him.

   It…. kind of pisses you off, really.

What a way to start the new school year.


End file.
